1) Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a POS system which employs a purchased commodity accommodating and transporting apparatus such as a shopping cart (hand cart) or a shopping basket for use in the distribution industry, particularly in a store such a mass sales store, a convenience store or a supermarket to allow a customer to accommodate and transport a purchased commodity, and more particularly to a POS system which employs a purchased commodity accommodating and transporting apparatus (scanning cart) having a self scanning function to allow a customer to purchase a commodity while the customer itself reads a commodity code such as a bar code applied to the commodity.
2) Description of the Related Art
Generally, a POS system is employed in various stores such as supermarkets and convenience stores. In the POS system, a customer walks around in a store pushing a shopping cart or carrying a shopping basket, places commodities to be purchased into the shopping cart or the shopping basket, and comes to a settlement POS terminal (POS register).
Then at the settlement POS terminal, an operator takes out the commodities one by one from the shopping cart or the shopping basket and reads the bar codes (commodity codes) applied to the commodities by means of a scanner to effect registration processing. In particular, in accordance with commodity code information read from each bar code, the price of the commodity corresponding to the commodity code is retrieved from a commodity price file (PLU (Price Look Up) file), and a total amount of money of the purchased commodities is calculated to settle the accounts.
With such POS system, however, since an operator must perform a reading operation of a commodity code of each commodity, much time is required for such reading operation and a settling operation, which causes the customer to wait for a long time. Accordingly, in a time band in which customers are crowded, a queue of customers is produced in front of a settlement POS terminal, and besides, the burden on the operator is heavy.
Thus, in recent years, a shopping cart (scanning cart) or a shopping basket having a scanner (commodity code reading section) for reading a bar code (commodity code) applied to a commodity has been developed and are disclosed in various publications including, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Applications No. Showa 63-145591, No. Heisei 2-277412 and No. Heisei 5-81559.
In a POS system which employs a shopping cart or a shopping basket of the type mentioned, a customer itself reads a bar code applied to a commodity to be purchased by means of the scanner to register the commodity code information and places or accommodates the commodity into an accommodating section of the shopping cart or the shopping basket, and then after selection of commodities to be purchased is completed, the commodities are placed into the shopping cart or the shopping basket and transported to a settlement POS terminal.
Then at the settlement POS terminal, the commodity code information (or commodity price information corresponding to the commodity code information) registered by the customer itself is loaded down by radio or some other suitable means, and a total amount of money of the purchased commodities is calculated based on the commodity code information (commodity price information) to effect settlement of the accounts.
With the POS system, an operator no more need read the commodity codes of commodities one by one, and the time (register operation time) required for reading processing and settling processing can be reduced significantly. Consequently, the customer need not wait for a long time any more and also the burden on the operator can be reduced remarkably.
With the conventional POS system described above, however, upon settlement of accounts at a settlement POS terminal, a customer must transfer information of commodity codes which have been registered by the customer itself or commodity price information corresponding to such commodity code information by wireless or by some other suitable means from a self scanning cart or a shopping basket or a like member having a self scanning function to the settlement POS terminal. Accordingly, the conventional POS system has a subject to be solved in that much time is required for accessing for such data transfer processing, which makes a factor of an increase of the settlement time, and the reliability is not satisfactory in that data may not possibly be transferred completely.